Today’s D Brief: New analysis after the strike over Crimea; Sweden extradites Turkish man; Latvian PM calls out Russia; And a little bit more.
We now have a much clearer picture of the destruction at a Russian airbase in occupied Ukrainian Crimea on Tuesday. Commercial satellite imagery companies such as Planet Labs (at BBCeg) and Maxar (here) have been releasing post-strike photos over the past 48 hours, and what they reveal is pretty mind-blowing—especially when you look at Maxar’s before-and-after collection.
At least two major questions remain: What arms or staff was responsible for this type of injury? And why was Russia’s sophisticated air defenses up to the task on that fateful day? For Ukraine, officials said Washington Post on Wednesday that their special forces were involved in the attack, but exactly how is still unclear.
Despite persistent public denials that the incident was something more than an unfortunate accident, “Russian forces at the airbase likely know by now what happened but may not yet understand how or exactly from where Ukrainian forces carried out the attack,” analysts at the Institute for the Study of War wrote in his Wednesday night assessment. Ukrainian forces may have modified existing weapons systems for the Crimean assault, ISW says, but admits that remains a very open question.
On the less noisy side of Russia’s illegal occupation, ongoing “forced passporting, rubellization, ‘filtering’ and other ‘integration measures’ already underway in Russian-occupied territories are far more important and damaging to Ukraine” than holding referendums on whether or not to join the Russian state, effectively annexing oblasts such as Zaporizhia and Donetsk, according to ISW.
ICYMI: Russia recently launched an Iranian satellite into orbit, which may have been a quid pro quo arrangement with Moscow since US officials now believe Russian troops have received drone training from Iranian officials in recent weeks, according to CNNreports Tuesday.
In a new first, Swedish officials have agreed to extradite a wanted Turkish man that officials in Ankara are looking into allegations of bank card fraud, Reuters reported Thursday from Stockholm. “A Justice Ministry spokesman declined to say whether the man was on the list of people Turkey has called for extradition” to get Ankara’s initial approval to allow Sweden and Finland to join the 30-nation NATO alliance. The man, reportedly in his 30s, already risks 14 years in prison in Turkey, according to SVT.
“Spring [NATO] the alliance is closer than ever, US President Joe Biden said shortly before the signing of ratification documents from the Senate approving Sweden’s and Finland’s NATO bid on Tuesday. “It is more united than ever. And when Finland and Sweden raise the number of allies to 32, we will be stronger than ever. And this will benefit all our people.”
Pentagon chief Lloyd Austin visited Latvia this week. While there, he visited Lielvarde Air Base, where he spoke with forward-deployed U.S. troops, according to a Pentagon reading. Lita Baldor of the Associated Press has more from that trip, here.
News: Latvia’s parliament has just unanimously declared Russia a “state sponsor of terrorism” and asked allied nations to do the same, Agence France-Presse reports. Vladimir Putin’s invading forces are using “suffering and intimidation as tools in their attempts to demoralize the Ukrainian people and the armed forces and paralyze the functioning of the state to occupy Ukraine,” the parliamentarians wrote. Russia’s Foreign Ministry responded by calling the declaration “primary xenophobia” and that “it is necessary to call the ideologues nothing but neo-Nazis.”
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Welcome to this Thursday edition of The D Brief, Is presented by Ben Watson and Jennifer Hlad and Caitlin Kenney. If you don’t already subscribe to The D Brief, you can do so here. And check out others Defense one newsletter here. On this day in 1972, the US military’s last ground combat unit – the US Army’s 3rd Battalion, 21st Infantry Regiment –resigned Vietnam. The unit would be inactivated the following August, but American forces would remain in Vietnam until April 30, 1975, when the Saigon airlift is carried the last ones out of the capital.
Regional assessment after RIMPAC: The US Navy captain in command of the USS Abraham Lincoln aircraft carrier (CVN-72) said Wednesday she has “no new concerns” about traveling in the Indo-Pacific. That’s despite China’s reaction to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s visit to Taiwan, and the fact that Lincoln was shadowed by Chinese navy warships during its time in the region around Hawaii for the recent US-led Rim of the Pacific exercises, Defense oneCaitlin Kenney reports.
“We’ve been doing the same thing we’ve been doing for another 75 or so years in the INDOPACOM area,” Capt. Amy Bauernschmidt told reporters Wednesday, before the carrier strike group returned home to San Diego on Thursday after seven months away.
Even during that deployment, Sailors and Marines inspected and repaired F/A-18s and F-35s affected by the ejection seats that grounded the majority of the Air Force’s US-based F-35s. But because CVN-72 was near Hawaii at the time, Bauernschmidt said, they had the people and parts necessary to make the fixes quickly and keep the aircraft operational. “There was really no impact on the mission of this warship at all,” she said.
Watch out: Kenney will join us to discuss his trip to Hawaii for RIMPAC in our latest Defense One Radio podcast, which airs Friday. Listen to iTunes, Spotifyor wherever you get your podcasts.
From the region:
And finally: the US military launched three airstrikes in Somalia on Tuesday. US Africa Command officials say the strikes killed four alleged al-Shabaab militants, according to a statementand no civilians are believed to have been injured or killed in the attacks.
BTW: Somalia is a “hotspot” for Islamic State in the Horn of Africa, according to an expert on African security who spoke to the UN Security Council on Tuesday. Martin Ewi of the Institute for Security Studies told the council that Islamic State “has expanded its influence beyond moderation” in Africa, and the continent could be “the future of the caliphate”. AP has more, here.